Bitcoin Nears 20 Million Milestone as Scarcity Takes Center Stage

Bitcoin is about to hit a huge supply milestone. Sometime between March 9 and 10, it’s expected that the 20 millionth BTC will be mined, a huge moment in the network’s history. This means more than 95% of all the Bitcoin that will ever exist is already in circulation.

The cryptocurrency’s supply is permanently capped at 21 million coins, a rule embedded in the protocol by its creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.

Roughly 1 million BTC will be left, and that’s estimated to be mined over the following 100 years, while it took around 17 years to mine the first 20 million BTC.

The reason it’ll take so long is because of Bitcoin’s built-in halving mechanism.

Every four years (or every 210,000 blocks), the reward miners get for adding a new block gets cut in half. This keeps new supply from flooding the market. Eventually, rewards will be so tiny that miners will make most of their money from transaction fees and not from newly minted coins.

Hitting 20 million mined means Bitcoin is officially in the final stretch. Approximately only 4.8% of all BTC is left to be created, driving home the whole scarcity thing even more.

Due to this, a lot of people compare Bitcoin to gold. Unlike regular money, no government or central bank can change how Bitcoin gets released.

The latest Middle East turmoil is hitting oil markets and global liquidity, and is starting to shake risk assets like crypto as well.

itself was doing well last week, even reaching a price increase to about $73,000. However, now the price is hovering close to $69,000 again.

The current US-Israel and Iran conflict, along with the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, is adding volatility to crypto, and it’s going to be hard to predict how the price will go from here.